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Over the last decade or so, Christian leaders in Western world have become acutely aware of the decline of the Christian faith in its former centers of power and influence. The numbers show a loss of roughly 5000 Christians every single day. Alex McManus has summed up the irony of this retreat aptly: “The Western world has lost its faith in the shadows of church steeples.” In response to this reality scholars, writers, and activists such as Lesslie Newbigin, Alan and Debra Hirsch, Michael Frost, Neil Cole, Donald Guder, and Reggie McNeil have helped to inspire and describe a paradigm shift in ecclesiology.

Missional church refers to a broad and loosely unified movement committed to recapturing the apostolic ethos of the New Testament era Church. The essence of missional is the recognition of the need of the Christ following movement to reengage the world with the Gospel by embodying a “go” and “sent” mentality. Missional churches come in all shapes and expressions: liturgical, organic, house church, multi-site, traditional, etc. But they share a commitment to incarnate the Gospel among those currently outside of the Christ following movement instead of waiting for such persons to be attracted to existing communities. The launching of new faith communities is at the forefront of the missional movement.

Here are five emphases common to those self-identified with missional:

Church as the Sent People of God
Missional churches seek to cultivate an apostolic DNA of “go” rather than “come.” The focus of discipleship is the mission of God. Christ followers see themselves as ambassadors or equippers of those engaged in mission. Discipleship is not separated from mission. In fact, evangelism and mission are construed as the shared values rather than the spiritual gifts of a select few.

The World as the Locus of Ministry
Missional churches consciously embody an “outside of the four walls of the church” posture. Ministry is practiced in the neighborhood rather than on the campus. Missional churches adopt local schools, feed the hungry, hold bible studies in public places, and other practices that present a visible witness to a watching world.

Churches as Mission Outposts
Missional churches see themselves as outposts on the frontier between heaven and hell rather than as safe refuges from the world. Communities of faith exist as training and equipping bodies that gather for worship in preparation for doing God’s work in the world. Missional churches avoid a siege or bunker mentality. Communities of faith exist in and for the sake of the world.

Pastor as Resident Missiologist
In missional churches, pastors see themselves primarily as the resident missiologists. They eschew old understandings of the pastor as chaplain, resident theologian, or ceo. Such identities represent artifacts from the past. Instead, missional pastors focus on equipping all Christ followers to engage fully in God’s mission in the world. They empower the people of God for service in the world.

New Measures for Evaluating Success
In the past, communities of faith judged vibrancy and health by means of maintaining membership rolls, tracking average attendance in worship services and Sunday school, and counting baptisms and confessions of faith. In the emerging missional context, what counts is the impact that a community has on the world around it—e.g., how well have we eradicated hunger among children in the local elementary school, how much of our budget is spend on the community, how many members do we lose to new church plants and other missional projects?

To what extent has your community of faith been impacted by the missional movement?

This week I will be teaching a course in tandem with this year’s Kingdom Encounter at Asbury Theological Seminary. Alan and Deb Hirsch are the featured speakers.

COURSE DESCRIPTION/GOALS
This course is being offered in tandem with Kingdom Encounter 2011 featuring Alan and Debra Hirsch. This course will explore the role of biblical interpretation within the missional church movement. Using the writings and teaching of Alan Hirsch as a representative of the missional church, students will reflect critically and theologically on a missional approach to the Bible. Focus will be on empowering participants to contextualize the Scriptures for the proclamation of the Gospel to the world and the renewal of the Church with special attention to the student’s ministry context.

STUDENT COMPETENCIES
Having successfully completed this course, participants should be able to:
• Articulate the significance of context (social-location), and especially the missional, theological and ecclesial contexts, for engagement in biblical interpretation;
• Dialogue critically with the writings and ideas of Alan and Debra Hirsch as representative of the broader Missional Church movement;
• Assess critically the role that the Bible serves in the missional church;
• Reflect critically and practically on the promise and prospects of a missional hermeneutic
for proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st century; and
• Understand key issues in communicating the message of the Scripture in pre-Christian or
post-Christian contexts.

I am requiring the following texts:

Let me know if you have questions.

I am offering the course Biblical Interpretation for the Missional Church (BS750 crosslisted also as MS750). This is a 3 cr/hr tutorial that will be taught in tandem with the 2011 Kingdom Encounter at Asbury Seminary (Florida campus) featuring Alan and Debra Hirsch.

Alan and Debra Hirsch will teach on the content of their latest book: Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship (Shapevine)
.

If you are interested in my course, download a pdf of the syllabus here.

Here are the required texts for my course:

Contact me if you have questions.

I am looking forward to participating in the Catapult Conference in a a couple of weeks. There is a great lineup of speakers: Alan and Deb Hirsch, Michael Slaughter, Reggie McNeal plus a wide variety of Breakout Sessions. I am looking forward for the opportunity to meet some of these authors, thinkers, and practitioners from whom I’ve already learned much.

I have been asked to teach about missional hermeneutics. This is exciting. I have focused my recent research, writing, and teaching on a missional approach to reading the Bible (see my essay “What is a Missional Hermeneutic?“). I’ve never considered this an academic exercise. Instead, I have worked to help pastors and other Christ followers to read Scripture through the lens of mission because I believe that this approach to Scripture arises out of a close reading of the Bible itself and is absolutely necessary for our post-Christendom contexts in the Western world.

As such I will be making three different presentations at Catupult:
1) A Bible Study on Matt 4:17-22. Introducing a missional hermeneutic as a call to (re)align continually with God.

2) Breakout Session: “Reading Scripture in the Mission Field”
What does it mean to read Scripture in light of our 21st century post-Christian context? How do we interpret the Bible in ways that both unleashed God’s people to live missionally in the world and at the same time invite preChristians to join the Christ-following movement? Brian will teach a practical session that will introduce a missional approach to engaging both the Church and the World with the message of the Old and New Testaments.

3) Plenary Session: (re)Aligning with God: Reading Scripture for the Church and the World

Here is the full schedule for Catapult

I hope that some of you can join us for this event. Registration remains open.

The following is a list of topics and speakers:

* Culture Making and the Local Church with Mark Batterson & Matt Chandler
* Diversity and Church Planting with Efrem Smith, Mark DeYmaz, & Janet McMahon
* Creating Movements & Networks with Dave Gibbons
* Being Present with the City with Alan Hirsch, Shane Claiborne, & Neil Cole
* Compassionate Justice: Ideation to Implementation with Dave Ferguson & Armando Fullwood

Here is the Hirsch, Claiborne, and Cole video:

The Ideacamp at Exponential 2010 with Shane Claireborne, Neil Cole and Alan Hirsch from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.

Watch the videos here.

I am working my way through the new book by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church (Hendrickson, 2008). It is an excellent book in which Frost and Hirsch continue to describe more specifically their understanding of missional church in light of the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There essential argument is that a rediscovery of or fresh encounter with the Jesus of the Scriptures will mold our understanding of God, ecclesiology, and the world.

Part of chapter One includes these penetrating descriptions of the Church as a missional community:

“Therefore to be reJesused is to come to the recognition that the church as the New Testament defines it is not a religious institution but rather a dynamic community of believers who participate in the way of Jesus and his work in this world”

Quoting from Bosch’s Transforming Mission (p. 519):
Mission takes place where the church, in its total involvement with the world, bears its testimony in the form of a servant, with reference to unbelief, exploitation, discrimination and violence, but also with reference to salvation, healing, liberation, reconciliation and righteousness…Looked at from this perspective mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus, wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems to belie. It is the good news of God’s love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.”

Robert McAfee Brown:
“our task to create foretastes of [kingdom of God] on this planet–living glimpses of what life is meant to be, which include art and music and poetry and shared laughter and picnics and politics and moral outrage and special privileges for children only and wonder and humor and endless.” Quoted in “The Meaning of Life”: http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-037.html

All of these quotations occur on p. 29 of ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

How do these quotations help to (re)imagine missional communities as we seek to advance the Gospel in our day?